A skyscraper is more than just a building. And Manhattan’s new generation of supertall buildings are more than mere skyscrapers. They are an expression, to some, of wealth’s metastasizing supremacy.
“It’s the architecture of rupture. It’s deliberately designed, from an ideological point of view (and its explicit on the part of the architect), to have a rupture,” says Lynn Ellsworth, a leader of the group New Yorkers for a Human-Scaled City. “This is real-estate ideology that they own into the sky and that we’re taking away their right to build.”
“They don’t own up there. We’re giving it to them. We’re giving away the public commons to a real-estate developer for nothing, really. You know, I feel like the sky belongs to us.”
That’s just one of the opinions City Limits heard about this new era in high building, and high living. Below the clip are photos of some of the properties involved.
